


Last Ones Up in Beach City

by maria_eshu



Series: Gems - Between the Lines [2]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 13:10:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11291364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maria_eshu/pseuds/maria_eshu
Summary: This takes place just after Ep 109: Last One Out of Beach CityPearl and Amethyst connect after they return to Beach City.Lapis is confused and conflicted about an encounter she witnesses. Garnet tries to reach out to her.





	Last Ones Up in Beach City

**Author's Note:**

> This work does reference Part 1: Stronger Than You Think, however it mostly stands on it's own.

The Dondai pulled to a stop outside of the carwash, and the lights turned off, leaving only the streetlight and a dim glow of the few stars overhead. Pearl looked out the windshield at the cloudy night sky and took a deep breath of the salty sea air before rolling up the window and cutting the engine.

“I guess I’ll carry him home.” Amethyst said, craning her neck to look into the backseat at Steven, who was slumped against the door sleeping.

“Hey!” Greg’s voice came from outside, and Pearl pushed the door open and climbed out of the car. She wore the leather jacket, but had the jeans folded neatly in one arm.

“You guys were out late!” Greg said, as he climbed out of his van and headed their way. “The show must have been really good.”

“Yes,” Pearl replied, giving him a rare smile. “It was actually fun! Thank you for letting us take your car.” She held out the keys to him, and dropped them into his hand.

“Fun?!” Amethyst exclaimed from over the hood of the car. “You should have seen her Greg, Pearl was totally bad ass! Getting girl’s numbers, fleeing the law, moshing like a _beast!_ ”

“Cool!” Greg said, “Wait-”

“Hey, Greg,” Amethyst cut him off. “Can we leave Stew-ball here for the night? I don’t really want to carry him all the way back. Though I guess I could just chuck him real hard…” Amethyst squinted in the direction of the Temple.

“Amethyst!” Pearl admonished her.

“Ehh, you can just leave him.” Greg said. “I think I’ve got that caterpillar sleeping bag in the van.”

“Great!” Amethyst called over her shoulder, already walking away. “You missed an awesome night! Ask Steven about it in the morning!”

“So…” Greg said to Pearl, rubbing the back of his neck,

“Uhh,” Pearl said nervously, glancing over her shoulder at Amethyst’s retreating form. “Bye.” She said awkwardly, then abruptly turned to leave before Greg could ask questions or initiate uncomfortable small talk.

Pearl caught up to Amethyst quickly. To her surprise, Amethyst didn’t say anything else, and the two walked in silence down the boardwalk until they got to the beach.

“Are you gonna call her?” Amethyst asked as they walked across the sand. “You could use Steven’s phone.”

“I don’t know.” Pearl replied. “She _was_ interesting, but we have enough humans to protect without looping another one into…all of this.” Pearl gestured at the sky.

“Ha! It doesn’t have to be serious.” Amethyst scoffed as she pointed out, “You can just have a one-time thing, it would probably do you some good.”

“Well, maybe.” Pearl said. “But a human?”

“Why not?”

“They can’t even fuse!” Pearl said.

“So?” Amethyst said, “We’re all partial to Gems, but Garnet is already involved, and that doesn’t leave many options. Unless you consider Lapis or Peridot.”

“Ugh.” Pearl said. “Trust me, I don’t. Besides, I think they’re busy considering each other.”

“So who does that leave?” Amethyst asked. “You should call her, buy her a drink.”

They walked in silence for a few more moments. Then Pearl said, her voice almost inaudible, “You.”

“Huh?” Amethyst asked, confused. They rounded the towering rocks and the Temple loomed into sight, the epic stone carving reaching into the night sky.

“You asked who that leaves.” Pearl said. “That leaves you.” Pearl stopped suddenly.

Amethyst sighed.

“We’ve been there, Pearl.” She said. “I’m not into being your fall back anymore, that wasn’t good for either of us.”

“Rose is gone.” Pearl said. “There’s no one to fall back from.”

Amethyst looked up at Pearl to see if she was serious.

“Pearl…” She started, hesitating as she tried to sort out her own feelings. “It’s not that I don’t think about it. Every time we form Opal I’ve thought about it. I admit, hanging out with you tonight, I thought about it. But let’s face it, we’re not all that compatible.”

“Opal is pretty compatible. Besides, this whole night, why do you think I did it? Steven would have been happy to sit at home and do a puzzle with me, it was _you_ I was trying to impress.” Pearl said. “Like you said, it doesn’t have to be serious, and it doesn’t have to be fusion.”

“A one-time thing?” Amethyst asked.

“A one-time thing.” Pearl confirmed, dropping to one knee so she was eye to eye with Amethyst, who hid behind her hair, but couldn’t completely hid her flush.

Amethyst reached out and turned up the collar to the leather jacket Pearl had reclaimed. Then, still gripping the collar, she stepped forward and kissed her.

Pearl leaned into the kiss, sliding her hands up and through Amethyst’s luxurious purple hair. As they kissed, so many past encounters flooded the diminishing space between them. The times Rose had left to play with one of the many men that had briefly held her interest and Pearl had sought to forget in Amethyst’s understanding embrace, the night Rose and Greg had tried to fuse, and the brief time they’d shared together when Steven was a baby, both in mourning of the gem that had made them feel like they were part of something bigger. The times she couldn’t bear the empty spaces where Rose had been, and Amethyst had filled those spaces for her.

Pearl pushed thoughts of Rose out of her mind, shoving them back into a dark corner where she didn’t have to look at them, not just then. Instead she thought of the moments before forming Opal, when nothing and no-one else mattered, when their quarrels and fears and loneliness faded away and they found solace in fusion.

Pearl felt the light growing between them, and pulled back from Amethyst a bit, both of them resisting the urge to fuse. Fusion wasn’t their goal tonight. Amethyst grinned and grabbed Pearl’s hand.

“Come to the water with me.” She said. “You need to lighten up, Pearl.”

Pearl let herself be tugged along until they stopped just where the waves lapped at the shore. She shrugged off her leather jacket and tossed it back to dry land just as Amethyst pulled her down to the hardened damp sand. Amethyst glowed a soft purple as she started to transform.

“Wait,” Pearl said, reaching out to her. Pearl closed her eyes and felt her own shifting powers activate. It didn’t take much energy to simply discard the light forms she manifested as clothing, it was one of the first things Pearls were expected to do to demonstrate that they could please their owners, and while it had never been a sexual act on Homeworld, it had been millennia since she had discarded her clothing simply to show submission. On Earth it was liberating.

When she opened her eyes, Amethyst was staring at her as if it were the first time again, and Pearl could almost feel the bright half-moon’s light on her skin. “Don’t shapeshift, I don’t need you taller.” Pearl said. “I want you as you are, just…” She trailed off, also trailing her fingers over the strap of Amethyst’s shirt.

Amethyst flushed, glowing again and discarding her own clothes. Her hair fell around her shoulders, obscuring her body, but Pearl pushed it aside to run her fingers over a full breast, dark purple nipple hardening at her touch. Amethyst, her cheeks flushed midnight, pushed Pearl down onto the sand, onto her back, then straddled her, leaning down to kiss her again, this time more deeply.

As the tide came in they ran fingers, lips, and tongues over each other, Pearl delighting in the hills and valleys of Amethyst’s voluptuous body, and Amethyst worshiping the graceful lines and angles of Pearl’s form.

 

 

Lapis Lazuli soared through the night, scanning the ocean below for anything interesting as she thought back to her experimental fusion with Peridot. Since that first time, they hadn’t attempted it again, Peridot seeming to leave it up to Lapis to suggest it. Lapis wasn’t sure she wanted to any time soon, but she knew she wanted something.

Peridot was busy back at the barn, engaged on her tablet in a battle with something she called a “blogger”, and after assuring herself that Peridot would be able to handle the whatever the threat was, Lapis had quickly lost interest and gone out to survey their domain. The night was quiet, Beach City was asleep, and even the ocean seemed peaceful, the tide slowing moving in to the shore.

 _Maybe Steven will be awake._ She thought. _It won’t hurt to check in._

When she flew past his window it was dark, but as she readied herself to head back into the sky she caught sight of movement on the beach.

Lapis squinted down at the writing forms in the surf. At first she thought it was a mutant Gem experiment, but then, just as she was about to draw up the ocean to strike it down, she recognized who it was.

 _Amethyst?_ She thought in curiosity, _What is she…Pearl._ A deep anger swelled in her chest, but she pushed it back down. _I’ll just leave them to whatever they’re doing._ She thought, but she found herself flying down to a rocky outcropping and tucking herself into the shadows there.

Amethyst and Pearl were lying half in the water, pressed together, bodies sliding against each other as the surf pounded around them. Pearl’s back was arched and her chest was bare, and Amethyst was on top of her, her hair all around them, and her hands between Pearls back and the wet sand.

 _Are they fusing?_ Lapis wondered, her heart beat quickening, but she quickly realized that though they were glowing slightly, they seemed intent upon maintaining their forms. At first their faces were pressed together, as if they were whispering secrets, then Amethyst began to move lower, her lips seemingly seeking for something along Pearl’s toned torso.

 _They are so different,_ Lapis thought, _Amethyst is all soft curves, and even when she’s not shapeshifting, her form seems so fluid and changing, Pearl is more rigid…no, not rigid, controlled. She’s in control all the time, of herself and everything around her._

Pearl’s fingers twined through Amethyst’s hair as Amethyst settled with her face between Pearl’s thighs. As the tide continued to come in around them, tugging at their forms, Lapis could feel her connection with the water as it flowed around their bodies. She tried to reign in her power, feeling like she was crossing a line; watching was one thing, but touching was another entirely. She knew well enough the feeling of being touched without consent, besides, feeling Pearl’s body shudder as she moaned in pleasure was _not_ something that interested her.

Lapis turned away, launching into the sky, wanting suddenly to be anywhere but here. Anywhere but watching two gems intermingling in the sea, where she couldn’t help but feel their mounting pleasure. She nearly soared past the Steven’s house, where it encompassed the entrance to the Temple. But as she rose, she felt her emotions swirling within her, and her vision blurred. She landed clumsily on the wooden deck, going down to one knee. Anger, fear, disgust, and shame warred within her, and she felt herself spiraling down, down in to the depths of the ocean, or was it the bleak emptiness of space?

 _Trapped in the mirror, trapped under the sea, the vastness of space was a reprieve until Peridot discovered me wandering there. Locked me in a cell at Yellow’s behest._ Lapis thought, images of her various prisons flashing before her.

As soon as she turned from one, another would loom up around her. The weight of the ocean pressing down, Jaspers maniacal sneer, chains taunt between them, then the emptiness of the shapeless yellow holding room she’d been kept in in Homeworld, awaiting her short and unproductive trail. Peridot’s ship, in a tiny metal cell behind the electric glow of a gem disrupter field.

Earth, this planet that held her in it’s beautiful, yet confining atmosphere.

“A gilded cage is still a cage.” A voice penetrated the fog of her mind, dispelling the visions as a panic replaced them. Lapis whirled around to face the speaker, her wings and every muscle in her body ready to take flight.

Garnet’s imposing form loomed nearby, leaning casually on the door. That casual stance was too much like Jasper’s, the confident arrogance with which she’d relax against the wall outside Lapis’s cell on Peri’s ship, taunting her out of some sort of sadistic boredom.

Lapis took an involuntary step back, a tight sickness welling in her solar plexus.

 _Jasper is gone._ She reminded herself. _Bubbled like that other corrupted Gem Peridot defeated._

“I can see what’s happening to you.” Garnet said, again breaking up Lapis’s thoughts before they could run away with her again. “You’ve been through a lot, and you don’t trust us. That’s okay, you don’t have to.”

Lapis’s eyes narrowed.

Garnet reached up and pulled her glasses down, revealing all three of her eyes. Lapis was surprised by the expressiveness of those eyes, she was reminded of the two gems that made up Garnet.

“I think I can help you.” Garnet said.

“I don’t need your help.” Lapis said, her voice taunt. “I’m fine.”

Garnet seemed to be deciding something for a moment, then her face was resolute. She glowed, and split apart, her form separating and diminishing into two much smaller forms.

Ruby and Sapphire stood before Lapis, hands still clasped around the gems in their palms.

“Sapphire thought…” Ruby started and trailed off, turning to Sapphire.

“It would be easier to talk like this.” Sapphire finished. “We’ve spoken before.”

Lapis looked at her in surprise. “You’re _that_ Sapphire, Blue’s favored from her court on Homeworld?”

“I was.” Sapphire replied.

“That explains a lot.” Lapis replied. “I was a favorite of Blue too, in her inner court, even though I was often off planet mostly. You never saw any of this during the times we spoke?”

“None of this” Sapphire replied, gesturing at the world around them, “was in my future until Ruby saved me.”

“I wasn’t there when that happened.” Lapis said. “I was on Homeworld preparing to come here. I was supposed to consult on terraforming Pink Diamond’s Earth colony.”

“I remember.” Sapphire said. “I know what it’s like to be in a Diamond’s inner court, and I know what it is to be an outcast.”

“Do you know what it is to be held prisoner for thousands of years, only to be trapped with…in a fusion like that…” Lapis turned away, gripping the railing of the deck tightly.

“No. But I do know a lot about fusion.” Sapphire said, as she came up next to Lapis, keeping a comfortable distance. Ruby came up to Lapis’s other side, and sat, her legs dangling between the bars of the railing over the edge of the balcony. “And we know what it’s like,” Ruby interjected, “to be betrayed by a partner in fusion. Running from your bad thoughts won’t make them go away.”

“Do they ever go away?” Lapis asked quietly.

“No,” Sapphire said. “But when you learn to master them, they eventually lose their power to hurt you.”

“Jasper is corrupted and stuck in a bubble somewhere,” Lapis said, surprising herself at how much easier it was to speak to someone else from Blue’s court, “just like I was broken and stuck in a mirror in Pearl’s room…I don’t think Jasper should be allowed to reform, but it doesn’t feel right. Are you going to keep her prisoner forever?”

“Do you want to see her?” Sapphire asked. Ruby climbed up and reached for Sapphire’s hand.

“I-I don’t know.” Lapis stammered as she turned towards them.

Sapphire and Rubies hands touched and in a moment Garnet stood in front of her. “Come on.”

“Does your future vision tell you it’ll help me?” Lapis asked.

“There are many possible futures.” Garnet said, “In some it helps.”

Garnet started walking towards the door.

“And in others?” Lapis called after her.

Garnet didn’t answer, she simply held the door open and waited.

Lapis hesitated. _Do I even want her help?_ She wondered, but after a moment, she followed.

The inside of the house was much like Lapis remembered it from the brief glimpses she’d had in the past, but it was dark. The Temple door loomed, nearly as tall as Garnet, who had to duck to enter after to doors slid open at her approach.

 _Nothing to lose._ Lapis thought. _What do I even have left?_ Peridot’s face flashed in her mind’s eye, but she pushed it away as she stepped through the door into the inner sanctum of the temple. As her eyes adjusted to the dim red light and the door slid closed behind her, her gaze lifted to the ceiling.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of pink bubbles floated above, gems of nearly every variety trapped inside.

Lapis didn’t feel her legs moving, but she felt her Gem _click_ against the door as her back shored up against it.

The panic rose again, and she cast about the room for water, she could feel some nearby in the temple, but the structure was no ordinary building, it was some sort of an interdimensional portal, steeped in Gem magic, she couldn’t grasp the water she sensed, couldn’t even sense the water back in the ocean. The water in the air wouldn’t be enough to fight Garnet with.

“You…” Lapis said, her voice shaking, “Did you lure me here to capture me like all these other gems? In this prison! You can sense it can’t you? The corruption in me?”

“You think you are corrupted.” Garnet said, “You think you are like these Gems, but you’re not. I don’t want to keep you here.”

The door behind her slid open again, and Lapis almost fell backwards, but managed to right herself, poised to flee. Garnet stretched an arm towards the ceiling, her arm lengthening until it drew near a particular bubble. Carefully, Garnet plucked the bubble from among the others, and brought it down, holding it out to Lapis.

Lapis looked. Before her was Jasper’s Gem. To the eye there was nothing abnormal about her, other than her size and legendary perfection, but when Lapis focused on the energy that dimly emanated from the bubble, she should feel something dark and twisted, something corrupted.

“Is my Gem like this?” she whispered, horrified.

“No.” Garnet replied. “There are many emotions, fear, pain, and more, but no corruption from you. Trust me. You are not corrupted.”

“I’m not sure I _do_ trust you.” Lapis said, darkly. “Pearl may have been the one who held me captive, but you knew, and you let her.”

“Would I let you near Steven if you were dangerous?” Garnet asked.

Lapis sighed, and Garnet released Jasper’s bubble to float back up to the mass of bubbles above.

“You’re disappointed.” Garnet observed. “You thought you could blame what’s wrong with you on the corruption within.”

Lapis didn’t reply, letting her hair hide her eyes. _Even on Homeworld Sapphires are unnerving, and now here in this place, in this fusion she sees too much…I should go._

“These Gems,” Garnet gestured at the bubbles, “We’re keeping them safe here until we figure out how to heal them. But you can heal what’s broken.”

Lapis took another step backward.

“What you don’t realize yet,” Garnet continued, “is that there isn’t anything wrong with you at all. Everything that happened, it’s not your fault. Your reactions are perfectly reasonable. You’ve been hurt, not corrupted.

 _I don’t want to be seen like this._ Lapis thought, the panic coming for her, but not as hard as it had before. _This Sapphire is too…_

“I have to go.” Lapis managed before she fled.

 


End file.
